This invention relates to an apparatus and method of crushing, and thereby reducing the size, of aluminum soft drink cans, for shipping purposes, and, for distinguishing between the aluminum soft drink cans and the glass, or plastic bottles, used for the same purpose.
It has been customary in the soft drink industry, to use aluminum cans for packaging the product, ship these cans in packages of several different sizes to the customers, and, when the contents of the cans acre used, to have them collected, and recycle the aluminum into other products. In some cases, glass, or plastic containers are used instead of aluminum for this purpose. The use of glass, or plastic containers causes problems to the recycling industry, as there is no easy method of distinguishing between the plastic, and aluminum, and, if the used cans are to be crushed, and reduced in size for shipping, or storage, the plastic, or glass products would cause a serious safety problem, as well as creating a mix of plastic, glass, and aluminum, which would normally cause the crushing machinery to become non-functional, until the plastic, or glass was separated out of the aluminum.
Several approaches have been provided for crushing these cans, and all of them suffer from the problem of distinguishing between the aluminum cans, and the plastic, or glass bottles, used for the same purpose. Normally, the plastic, or glass products are separated from the aluminum by hand, causing a major problem to the crushing apparatus when one of the plastic, or glass bottles, is not separated, and becomes crushed with the aluminum. Many hours are required to separate the pieces of glass from the aluminum, and, in some cases, the machine becomes inoperable, until a repair man is summoned.